World’s largest Indonesian collection now lives at Dutch library

THE OLDEST university in the Netherlands has recently inaugurated its purpose-built Asian Library which hosts the largest Indonesian collection on the planet, as well as leading collections on South and Southeast Asia, China, Japan and Korea.

Back in September, Dutch royal Queen Máxima officially opened the new library at Leiden University in a ceremony that featured Balinese dance and gamelan music – a traditional instrument from Java and Bali.

The queen is also a custodian of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies.

The library’s opening marks Leiden’s Asia Year 2017/18, a celebration of the culture and history of the region and its study.

Two of the items in the Asian Library’s collection are even listed in the Unesco Memory of the World register: La Galigo (1908), the world’s largest epic, written in Buginese language and script; and the manuscript of Babad Diponegoro, where the Javanese Prince and national hero Diponegoro recounts his war against the Dutch (1825-1830).

The Asian Library aims to “put Leiden (the city, its museums and the University) more firmly on the international map as one of the world’s leading knowledge hubs on Asia, covering research, teaching, collections and expertise.”